Epoch-changing events & various little DT things

Hello subscribers!

What a week this has been! Up until Wednesday I had genuinely believed that a way out of the Ukraine crisis was still possible. Then on Thursday morning I was, as presumably most of my readers, dumbfounded by the news. More on this below.
  

Ironically, in a way, it was just the day before, on Wednesday morning, that I received a parcel from Moscow – containing three author’s copies of my book Atlas of Dark Destinations in the Russian version (the photo above features the cover). Later the same day I spontaneously made a new blog post about that featuring more photos and pointing out a few little details that are different from the English original (for interesting reasons – do take a look).

As at that point I had still been so (cautiously) optimistic that a solution to the crisis could somehow be found, I worded the post still a bit tongue-in-cheek in places. The next day I added an update saying that now I would have worded the post differently – but that I didn’t want to take it down in an act of self-censorship, so I let it stand. But what it says with regard to me enquiring about how the sales of the book are going in Russia no longer holds. Maybe at a later stage, but right now I’m not really interested.
  

On Friday I uploaded another new blog post, which I had already drafted on Monday and Tuesday and didn’t want to let go to waste. It’s about an anniversary day in the history of the little-known South American country of Suriname, which I had visited as part of my trip to the three Guianas (the other two being Guyana and French Guiana) in the summer of 2019, my last big summer trip before the pandemic.
  

Then on Saturday I felt that for once I had to jettison my self-prescribed neutrality and make a statement about Putin’s military invasion of Ukraine. As this involved Chernobyl, it had in a way become personal. In my world of dark tourism, I regard Chernobyl as this world’s No.1 destination. Now it will likely be unvisitable for some time to come.

Of course I also feel for all the people of Ukraine and all the Chernobyl tour guides, including in particular the private guide I had on my last two trips to Chernobyl and who’s based in Kyiv. I emailed him but still haven’t had a reply.

In this statement post I also felt compelled to dissect some of the propaganda used in Putin’s attempts at justifying the invasion.
  

Also ironically, in an online article about dark tourism, which is based on a recent interview and finally went live on Thursday, I’m quoted, amongst other things, saying that one of the good and educational aspects of engaging with dark tourism is that it can serve to make one less susceptible to propaganda ... that if you’ve dealt with, say, Nazi or communist propaganda through dark tourism, you can more easily see through current political propaganda; the mechanisms are often very similar. A frequent characteristic is some form of “newspeak” (to borrow the term from George Orwell’s “1984”). I hadn’t expected to be confronted with such a prime case in point so soon.

I just thought I had to speak out rather than stay silent on a matter of this epoch-changing magnitude. I hope most of you agree.
  

Needless to say, the dramatic developments of this week meant quite a distraction from my work on my main website. I basically put this aside for days. I found it hard to concentrate anyway. I have, however, meanwhile begun to write up my chapters about Switzerland. It’ll probably take me quite some time to finish that. It suddenly feels so insignificant. But I’ll provide the links once they’re done and uploaded.
  

But so much for now. I usually sign off every Newsletter by wishing readers a good week, and I would like to do that here again – yet I fear it’s not likely that it’s going to be a good week, especially not for Ukraine, or for ordinary people within Russia who do not support this war and protest against it.

But let’s not lose hope. May peace return soon.

Best wishes,

Peter